Babies! And Where My Monthly Prepping Budget Disappeared To

Sweet young things are popping out all over.

Baby 'Tribute' strawberries

An Itsy Bitsy 'Montmorency' cherry

A tiny 'Jonafree' apple

'Earliblue' blueberries-to-be

The rest of the garden has started to pick up its growth, too.

The north half of the garden, May 22. Compare to just a week earlier here.  

South half. The pea gravel is all down, finally

Lettuce galore

'Sugar Sprint' pod pea flowers

I think we are going to finally have success growing broccoli!
The heads grow visibly bigger every day.

I know I haven't posted about much other than gardening-related topics recently. And my monthly prepping plan? That's largely gone, sad to say. The reason for that is this empty space on our homestead:

Hubby Dear won't have to mow this part of our lawn too much longer

I sacrificed my prepping budget to save up for a building project this fall. If all goes according to plan, we will construct a barn, complete with hay loft, a milking area, and a wing for my ever-expanding collection of poultry. That is the plan; we'll see how it matches up to reality. We are paying cash for this construction, so our budget will be the factor that determines how grand my poultry palace will be and how many new species of animals will make their way to our homestead.

My name is Emily and I have a problem. I am addicted to livestock.

I feel better just admitting that! ;)

The Money Saving Mom's Budget: A Review

I was really excited to be given an advance copy of The Money Saving Mom's Budgetby Crystal Paine, the author of MoneySavingMom.com. Crystal's blog is one of my favorites. I have saved a ton of money over the past few months by following tips I've found on her website, so I knew that her book would have to be dynamite. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint.

This book isn't another collection of money saving strategies, though you will certainly find plenty of those here. Crystal has seven rules to financial success and only two of those directly relate to couponing and cost cutting. The rest of the book will help you set goals, create a written budget, and live well on a small income. If this sounds a little bit like something my hero, Dave Ramsey, would espouse, you are correct. The section on couponing is extremely easy to understand, even for the mathematically challenged. And even though the topic of finances can be dull, this book was fun to read and full of great examples from everyday life.

Let's face it: everyone can stand to save a little money. This book can definitely help you make the right choices for your family's budget and help free up some cash to devote to preparedness. Remember, if you don't have your finances in order, you're not truly prepared. (I did a series of posts on this subject, in case you missed it. ;)

The Money Saving Mom's Budget is available for pre-order at Amazon.com and will be on sale everywhere on January 10. Crystal is giving all her proceeds from this book to Compassion International, an outstanding charity that our family also supports. Check them out!

Month Eight in Review and Month Nine Prepping Plans

What I accomplished this month:

1. We bought and assembled a Shelf Reliance Harvest 72”. It looks maaah-velous and works great. I never did get around to getting a wooden board for the top. Hopefully next month.  
2. I bought a Brother P-Touch Labeler. I love it! I can't believe we've gone so long without one of these things. Label makers might be old news to many of you, but I'm like a little kid with a new toy. 

 You simply type in your wording:

And it prints out a cute little label:

Et Voila!

Organization!

Now there's no excuse for confusing the salt with baking soda. I'm looking at you, Hubby Dear....

 



3.   I continued to build up our food storage. This month I mostly bought canned goods to work on filling  up my Shelf Reliance unit. I planned to buy a lot more food storage, but I came to the end of the month and found that I had spent all my budget on regular groceries. This is because of item #4. All that fresh produce is expensive in the boonies!  

4.   Diet and exercise. Hubby Dear is competing in a "Biggest Loser"-type activity at his work and has shed nearly 15 pounds since he started on January 7th. I hate the male metabolism. I started before he did but have only lost somewhere between 5-8 lb. It's all about getting healthy anyway, right?

5.  I scored a few freebies like dental floss and OTC meds due to couponing. 

6.   My family was subjected to several rounds of canned meat taste tests (here, here, and here). I think I finally have the whole canned meat thing figured out now! ;)



What does Month Nine have in store?





Piece of junk?


1. I want to get a vacuum sealer like a FoodSaver. I mainly want to use it for vacuum sealing mason jars of nuts, chocolate chips, etc. I'm having a hard time figuring out which model to get, though, since the reviews of the most popular infomercial one aren't great. Do y'all have any recommendations for me?          
2. Stock up on first aid items - bandages, OTC meds, and more. One of my goals this year is to broaden and deepen our medical preps. 
3. Buy more items for food storage. I'm not sure what exactly, since it kind of depends on what goes on sale.   
4. Firm up our plans and buy our seeds for the upcoming garden season. Hubby Dear needs to finish rounding up the material for our Square Foot Garden soil mix.
5. Continue to diet and exercise. Oh the Joy.
6. Make a wooden board to fit across the top of my Shelf Reliance unit.



Month Five in Review and Month Six Preps

I achieved all of my Month Five Preps with the exception of #6 - the exercise component. I still need to work on being better with that. But I have more cash in my BOBs and vehicles, food storage containers, lots of new additions to my food storage, and more matches and toilet paper stocked.

Month six of my Prepping Plan is going to be fun. I'm feeling flush since Hubby Dear suggested we increase our prepping budget by about 40%. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he told me that. Not that he actually believes in this stuff. Nope, he doesn't think this is necessary even after reading One Second After. We're debt-free now and he is proud that I was able to stick to my prepping budget for five months so we could get there. Gotta love him! :)

So, this is what I'm thinking of for November:

1. More cash for our BoBs.
2. Stock up on oil and wicks for my oil lamps.
3. Buy a box of exam gloves for potential medical emergencies
4. Buy a quality hand grain mill. This one I'm really excited about.
5. Buy a case of dry milk. I've been putting this one off for a while.  
6. Pick up some freeze-dried and dehydrated odds and ends for food storage and bread making.
7. Exercise at least three times per week.

Where I stand in my food storage

I have been accumulating food storage for a few months now. I haven't made any huge purchases but I have been consistently buying a few extras when I go to the grocery store or warehouse club. Here are a few pictures of my major food storage areas.

I am fortunate to have a large kitchen with ample storage room. I cleaned out parts of two cabinets and am currently storing:

A 3/4 gallon of olive oil, 24 lb of salt, 2 jugs of maple syrup and 6 lb of baking soda are among my stored items here. I need to move some of these items to the basement because I intend on this area being a dry storage area. Items like the salt, baking powder and baking soda that absolutely must stay dry will be in this cabinet. Our basement never floods and never should, but it can be a bit humid in our storage room. To protect these items sensitive to moisture, I'm going to store them in the kitchen.

Here's my other storage cabinet in the kitchen:

I have items like different kinds of soup and tomato products here. The Diet Pepsi doesn't count as food storage! I am a total soda addict and have the cavities to prove it.

These pictures don't even show the items I have in my regular pantry. I am storing bottles of apple juice (about 7 weeks worth) along with the every day items that everyone has in their pantry.

Here's my basement storage area:

It's filled in a little bit since I last posted a picture of it. On the top rack I have my canning supplies and two gallons of vinegar. The next rack down has canned fruits, vegetables, and soup. I've only just started storing these types of goods and I don't have very many yet. The next rack has my home-canned items - pickles, tomatoes, dried oregano (not really canned but stored in a Mason jar) and green beans. Hubby Dear and I are slowly increasing our harvest from our garden and I hope to can even more next year. The next rack down has a mish-mash of items like Crisco, applesauce, jelly, 15 lb of peanut butter, salad dressing, and a variety of condiments. The bottom part of the storage rack has a couple of large plastic containers. In one I am storing boxes of baking mixes. Right now all it has are two lonely boxes of brownie mix. The other container has 36 lb of pasta.

When I have filled up this storage unit, I have a couple of shelves on other units cleaned off. I will, however, need to buy some sort of additional storage. I'm thinking about getting one of these from Shelf Reliance:

That would make rotation so easy, but I'm not sure it is the most efficient use of space.

When I look at what we've accumulated so far, I feel like we are getting somewhere.

That is until I watch some of the many YouTube videos where fellow preppers show off their food storage.

Sigh. We have so far to go.

We are making headway, though, and now that Hubby Dear has given me a budget, I'll be able to make consistent purchases. I am considering changing my Month Three Preps in order to make a large leap in our food storage next month.

Breaking News... Hubby Dear gets roped into prepping! Sorta.

Well, after our big talk with Dave Ramsey, Hubby Dear has agreed to allocate $300 a month in the budget towards prepping plus an additional $50 in the grocery budget for food storage. I can get quite a lot accomplished with that kind of budget. I'm happy, he's placated, all is good.

Hubby Dear is making a trip into town today to get preparations for a little July 4th gathering that we're having and I threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the mix.

Here's how the conversation went at the Harried Homemaker's Acres:

"Hubby Dear, you need to get some Product X", I told him, batting my eyes and wearing my most charming smile.

Product X, of course, is a pseudonym for an item that can be decidedly embarrassing for a male to purchase.

"Aw, sweetheart, I don't think I can buy that!", he cringed. It just wasn't a manly sort of purchase. Going to the store to buy strawberries, marshmallows, and Product X??

I replied, "Well, you know, I saw they have some drinking water safe hoses in the RV department at Wal-Mart. That ought to butch-up your shopping cart quite a bit. Why don't you pick up a couple of those as well?"

And so he did. :)